The growing inefficacy of photo campaigns

This year multiple photo campaigns were launched and executed by a variety of different groups. Just this semester, we have had the USG Body Image campaign, the SHARE Consent campaign, the Hidden Minority photo campaign and more. Although these causes are important and worthwhile, and the passion of the students running them is commendable, the repeated use of the same tactic has strongly decreased efficacy.

The reasons for using photo campaigns are obvious and understandable. Since the majority of students are active on social media, creating a photo series that can be shared on online platforms is an easy way of reaching people. Every comment and like becomes a free advertisement.

Another reason for the use of these photographic tactics is that they get people talking. The first large-scale profile picture changing for a cause that I can remember this year was the Princeton Perspective Project. The way people reacted to that effort by talking a lot about it after the photos were published probably inspired other groups to make similar moves.

However, this is a small community and so the same audience is being reached with each successive photo campaign. This decidedly dulls the impact. It is no longer notable to see that one of your classmates has changed his or her Facebook profile picture to a standardized and stylized picture promoting some event or cause. Because it is no longer special, people aren’t necessarily stopping to even see what the cause is or why people are participating in it. In other words, the primary goal of raising awareness in this method cannot be achieved, because everyone is too used to the tools being used.

It does not help that most of these campaigns are very visibly similar to one another. They generally have the student standing in front of an attractive backdrop (often outdoors now that the weather has gotten nicer), displaying messages written on pieces of paper, white boards or even the participants’ body parts. This format is chosen because it is aesthetically pleasing and because seeing people’s support written out in their own handwriting is inherently powerful. However, seeing all these similarly composed photographs, one after another, means that you cannot help but see them all as a blur of well-meaning causes. This is especially true because the messages all tend to be worded in a similar way as well.

My point is not that I am against photo campaigns. I have participated in some of the above-mentioned campaigns. I see both the planners and the participators as trying their best to get people interested in a cause that means something to them. I just think that in the future, we can do something to make these attempts stand out from one another.

It could be that the solution is taking a break from photo campaigns for a while. I think that the creative minds in all these organizations could find a different way to reach their target audiences. After all, the goal is to attract attention. For better or for worse, photo campaigns do not have the ability to do that anymore. We expect them, so we don’t notice them. Perhaps organizations could start sharing creative infographics online instead. Perhaps they could make the photo campaigns physical, with a series of posters around campus. Although the enormous number of posters currently plastered everywhere might make that seem even less effective, the novelty of seeing a familiar face in a context where you don’t expect to see it —like on a poster somewhere on campus —is inherently more eye catching than seeing it on social media. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all organizations should switch to either of the above solutions. That would just be shifting the problem. Instead, each organization should ideally try to find a new solution to the problem of attracting attention. In any case, for the time being, let’s slow down with the photo campaigns.

Zeena Mubarak is a sophomore from Fairfax, Va. She can be reached at zmubarak@princeton.edu.